Top 131 Quotes & Sayings by Rachel Carson

A rainy day is the perfect time for a walk in the woods.

There is one quality that characterizes all of us who deal with the sciences of the earth and its life - we are never bored.

In nature nothing exists alone.

The lasting pleasures of contact with the natural world are not reserved for scientists but are available to anyone who will place himself under the influence of earth, sea and sky and their amazing life.

Always the edge of the sea remains an elusive and indefinable boundary. The shore has a dual nature, changing with the swing of the tides, belonging now to the land, now to the sea.

One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, "What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew i would never see it again?

We live in a scientific age, yet we assume that knowledge of science is the prerogative of only a small number of human beings, isolated and priestlike in their laboratories. This is not true. The materials of science are the materials of life itself. Science is part of the reality of living; it is the way, the how and the why for everything in our experience.

To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of years, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.

If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.

A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement.

I believe natural beauty has a necessary place in the spiritual development of any individual or any society. I believe that whenever we substitute something man-made and artificial for a natural feature of the earth, we have retarded some part of man's spiritual growth.

We still talk in terms of conquest. We still haven't become mature enough to think of ourselves as only a tiny part of a vast and incredible universe. Man's attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.

The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials.

Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid surroundings, a circle of acquaintances who are not quite our enemies, the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal?

It is not half so important to know as to feel.

Drink in the beauty and wonder at the meaning of what you see.

To understand the living present, and the promise of the future, it is necessary to remember the past.

Those who love and free nature are never alone.

Even in the vast and mysterious reaches of the sea we are brought back to the fundamental truth that nothing lives to itself.

Science is part of the reality of living; it is the what, the how, and the why of everything in our experience.

Short version: For the child. . ., it is not half so important to know as to feel. If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. . . . It is more important to pave the way for a child to want to know than to put him on a diet of facts that he is not ready to assimilate.

Until we have courage to recognize cruelty for what it is - whether its victim is human or animal - we cannot expect things to be much better in the world. There can be no double standard. We cannot have peace among men whose hearts find delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing, we set back the progress of humanity.

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.

Conservation is a cause that has no end. There is no point at which we will say our work is finished.

The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues is for the most part irreversible. In this now universal contamination of the environment, chemicals are the sinister and little-recognized partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world-the very nature of its life.

Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe, the less taste we shall have for destruction.

It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility.

The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.

We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road - the one less traveled by - offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.

The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.

Knowing what I do, there would be no future peace for me if I kept silent.

Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth, are never alone or weary of life.

For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death.

We cannot have peace among men whose hearts find delight in killing any living creature.

We are not truly civilized if we concern ourselves only with the relation of man to man. What is important is the relation of man to all life.

For all at last return to the sea- to Oceanus, the ocean river, like the ever-flowing stream of time, the beginning and the end.

If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry.

There is no drop of water in the ocean, not even in the deepest parts of the abyss, that does not know and respond to the mysterious forces that create the tide.

Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions and they do not exist side by side with a lust for destruction.

The control of nature is a phrase conceived in arrogance.

If having endured much, we at last asserted our 'right to know' and if, knowing, we have concluded that we are being asked to take senseless and frightening risks, then we should no longer accept the counsel of those who tell us that we must fill our world with poisonous chemicals, we should look around and see what other course is open to us.

Nowhere on the shore is the relation of a creature to its surroundings a matter of a single cause and effect; each living thing is bound to its world by many threads, weaving the intricate design of the fabric of life.

Have we fallen into a mesmerized state that makes us accept as inevitable that which is inferior or detrimental, as though having lost the will or the vision to demand that which is good?

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.

The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery, not over nature but of ourselves.

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in.

I am always more interested in what I am about to do than what I have already done.

Now I truly believe that we in this generation must come to terms with nature, and I think we're challenged, as mankind has never been challenged before, to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature but of ourselves.

The 'control of nature' is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man.

There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature.

Every mystery solved brings us to the threshold of a greater one.

We still talk in terms of conquest. We still haven't become mature enough to think of ourselves as only a tiny part of a vast and incredible universe.

The real wealth of the Nation lies in the resources of the earth - soil, water, forests, minerals, and wildlife.

The Choice, after all, is ours to make.

A Who's Who of pesticides is therefore of concern to us all. If we are going to live so intimately with these chemicals eating and drinking them, taking them into the very marrow of our bones - we had better know something about their nature and their power.

But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.

The real wealth of the Nation lies in the resources of the earth soil, water, forests, minerals, and wildlife. To utilize them for present needs while insuring their preservation for future generations requires a delicately balanced and continuing program, based on the most extensive research. Their administration is not properly, and cannot be, a matter of politics.

The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place.

In every outthrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is the story of the earth.

Nature reserves some of her choice rewards for days when her mood may appear to be somber.